That beautiful young woman on the West Texas version of a beach is Lucia as a teenager.
Where her family lived was a lifetime away from a real beach but, like so many Dust Bowl towns, it had a sand problem. When you’re as poor as her family was, you learn to make the best of every situation — and no one was more resourceful than Lucia. She and her sisters would find a nice sandy patch where there weren’t many rocks sticking up and pretend they were bathing beauties like the pin-up girls in the magazine ads.
They didn’t have bathing suits, but Lucia found a way around that, too. For years she had sewn hand-made slips from muslin flour sacks. All she had to do was shorten them a bit and they turned into tunic-style “bathing suits,” even if there wasn’t a a swimmable body of water for miles.
One day a cousin who had somehow gotten hold of a box camera took pictures of the girls as they pretended to be modeling for a magazine or a postcard. The result was this priceless photo of an unspoiled beauty who had no idea how pretty she was.
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